Overview of the Authority

Gravesham is located in North Kent, twenty five miles from London. The 2001 census shows approximately 96,000 people living in the borough, in around 38,000 households.

Gravesham is a culturally diverse area with the largest minority ethnic community in Kent. The minority ethnic community makes up 10.9% of the people living in the borough, with the thriving Sikh community constituting nearly 7% of the borough’s population.

Gravesham is one of the Thames Gateway’s major regeneration areas, and has taken a proactive approach to ensure that community cohesion is at the heart of the regeneration agenda, and that the whole community shares fully in the benefits that this regeneration brings to the area.

Gravesham is a key member of the Dartford and Gravesham Local Strategic Partnership, whose vision is of

a place that is home to a vibrant mix of communities, both old and new.......where people want to invest in home, work and the family; lead safe and healthy lives with excellent opportunities for personal and collective fulfilment; enjoy culture and heritage and celebrate the diversity of the community.

A core element of Gravesham’s cohesive community is the excellent relationship that the council has built up with the North West Kent Racial Equality Council (NWKREC). A representative from the NWKREC sits on several key corporate groups within the council, maintaining the relationship of a "critical friend" and ensuring that positive links are sustained between the council and the local ME community.

The council has an excellent record of robust political and corporate leadership in the area of race equality, and has taken the unusual step of moving away from initiating a specialist equalities team, instead developing a corporate approach to race equality across the authority. A community cohesion steering group has been developed, with representation from senior officers from a number of departments as well as the NWKREC. This approach ensures that community cohesion is at the heart of decision making and policy development within the authority.

Gravesham is involved in strong and effective partnership working across a wide spectrum of community life across the borough and beyond, and with a diverse range of partners. Many of these partnerships have evolved over a number of years, and are constantly revisited and revised, to ensure that the partnerships and resulting projects remain focused and meaningful for the partners, and the whole of the local community.

Effective consultation with the whole community has ensured that Gravesham has delivered services and priorities that are both appropriate and relevant for its ME community. The authority continues to develop innovative and creative consultation events and mechanisms to reach out to groups and individuals that are often considered hard to reach through the more traditional consultation routes. This approach has been further strengthened by the involvement of the REC in many of the council’s consultation practices.

The council has a good track record on working with young people. Again, through close planning and delivery with the REC and other partner agencies and organisations, Gravesham continues to forge links with schools and youth groups and organisations to ensure that the voices of all young people from the borough are heard. In partnership with Kent County Council, Gravesham have recently developed a Youth Council, with representation from a diverse cultural mix of young people from the borough. These young people will work closely with officers and Councillors, taking forward a range of projects relevant to them.

The toolkits contained within this pack relate to Gravesham Borough Council’s core strengths in the area of promoting race equality, as outlined briefly in the introduction above, and give practical guidance to enable other local authorities to emulate Gravesham’s approaches, projects and general good practice within the area of community cohesion. These toolkits will be developed over the forthcoming year, and updated in the future, as Gravesham’s journey continues.

This information is available as a download document below.